The panel

Each year, TRDP selects a panel of established and respected professionals (dancers, dance educators, choreographers, dance critics, dance enthusiasts, etc.) in the area to provide feedback and mentorship opportunities to the selected choreographers. Without these incredible, thoughtful people, Tobacco Road Dance Productions wouldn't exist. This year's panelists are: 

Heather Tatreau is a choreographer, dance educator, and arts administrator. She holds a Master’s Degree from New York University and has spent 20 years teaching in higher education. Recently, she has found fulfillment in supporting the careers of other artists by serving as a producer and as a director of education and community engagement in the non-profit arts sector.

Heather’s choreographic work includes evening-length experimental dance theater pieces, traditional modern dances, live-streaming virtual performances, and site-specific pieces. She has been awarded numerous grants, residencies, and commissions for her work. Her most recent project, Voices: A Walking Tour, is a site-specific piece created on the UNC campus through collaborations in dance, music, and spoken word. This piece gives voice to diverse perspectives of the Chapel Hill landscape, uncovering relationships to place and one another. The 2021 iteration of this ongoing piece was recognized by Chatham Life and Style’s Best of 2021 for Outstanding Ensemble Performance.

Heather is excited to return to TRDP as a panelist during this site-specific season. She has always been drawn to site-specific work, finding inspiration for movement in art museums, architecture, and nature. Site-specific art can draw communities together, introduce multiple perspectives, and blur the lines between the personal and the collective. She is looking forward to a transformational season of art-making.

www.heathertatreau.com

Jasmine Powell is a dance artist and educator from Hillsborough, NC who grew up in the Durham dance scene through Carolina Friends School and Collage Dance Company. She holds a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA from Hollins University in collaboration with the American Dance Festival and Frankfurt University for Music and Performing Arts in Germany. Currently on the performing arts faculty at Cary Academy, she joyfully brings cultural history into the dance curriculum. Having worked with diasporic dance companies such as Philadanco, and notable choreographers including Dianne McIntyre, Milton Myers, and Ronald K. Brown, her mission investigates genre-crossing dance as an inquiry into how opposites can be embodied in each other. Jasmine currently performs locally with KT Collective Dance Company and COMPANY while engaging in her own choreographic journey with her latest NC premiere Approximation of a Woman. Her choreography has traveled into performing arts theaters, site-specific work, film festivals, and music videos with conceptual storytelling as the foundation. Jasmine is thankful to learn and share the value in exploring the organic movement of the body’s personal story through teaching, workshops, and performing through choreography avenues locally and internationally. www.jasminepowell.co/

2020 Panelists: Kristi Vincent Johnson, Jasmine Powell, Caitlyn Swett

2019 Panelists: Lindsey Allen, Kristin Clotfelter, Raina Lucas

2018 Panelists: Stephanie Leathers, Killian Manning, Heather Tatreau

2017 Panelists: Amy Love Beasley, Anjanée Bell, Jessi Knight

2016 Panelists: Alyssa Noble, Natalie Teichmann, Leah Wilks

2015 Panelists: Renay Aumiller, Nicola Bullock, Lightsey Darst